Panasonic will become the first manufacturer to have two Ultra HD Blu-ray Players on the market, following the announcement of the DMP-UB700 to join the existing DMP-UB900.

The UB700 does, of course, support High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging and shares many of the features of the flagship UB900, including 4K High-Precision Chroma Processor and 4K content streaming support.

After meeting the technical specifications standardised by the Ultra HD Alliance, the new player has been granted ULTRA HD PREMIUM certification. An extra boost of expertise in the making of the DMP-UB700 came from the Panasonic Hollywood Laboratory (PHL) Blu-ray R&D facility. The specialists there fostered and refined a new 4K High-Precision Chroma Processor equipped with imaging technologies such as chroma and high gradation processing. The DMP-UB700 also has an original 4K Direct Chroma up-scaling function so that it can deliver 4K-quality pictures from 2K content.

The DMP-UB700 features Twin HDMI outputs which will help if your receiver doesn’t have UHD or HDR support

In addition to conventional WAV/FLAC/MP3/AAC/WMA formats, DSD (5.6 MHz/2.8 MHz) and ALAC music files can also be reproduced in high resolution. The DMP-UB700’s entertainment functions aren’t limited to Ultra HD Blu-rays, the device can also stream online 4K videos, for example through YouTube and NETFLIX. For videographers or photographers, there’s the option to reproduce 4K videos (MP4) and JPEGs in 4K resolution.

We expect the price to be around £399 which is well under the £599 the UB900 commands.

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